This is Part One of maevedragon’s tutorials about the entire chair slipcover process. Learn more about maevedragon in her intro. She tells us all about draping a slipcover and sewing the slipcover in our next posts.

Disclaimer: This tutorial started with the intentions of simply showing people how I create a slipcover for my wing chair. As I started to design my slipcover, however, I realized that wing chairs come in a large variety of shapes–too many, in fact. How could I possibly write a tutorial on creating a wing chair slipcover with this much variation?

Step 1: Sketching
The first step in creating your slipcover is sketching your design. This is the time to decide where you want seams, closures, tucks, and any decorative features to be. For slipcovers, a great way to know where you should put seams is to look at the chair upholstery: more often than not, they’ve included seams in certain places for a reason. Ignore this and you’ll be rewarded with the dreaded “riiiiiiiiiiiip!” noise (been there, done that).

Marking the seams and the tucks on the sketch gives you something to refer back to if you get confused, which can easily happen when your project reaches the 3-dimensional pattern pieces.

Sketch of the slipcover.

Marking seams, tucks…

…And more.

Step 2: DraftingOUTSIDE WING/ARM

Roughly measure the various parts of your chair with a yardstick or a cloth measuring tape. The idea is to get the max measurements for each pattern piece. You’ll use these measurements to cut your kraft paper into rough rectangles that will cover the piece of the chair to be transformed into a pattern piece.

Pin the rectangle to your chair with straight pins (just push the pin through the upholstery into the cushion; if you have an upholstery material that might be damaged with this method, you might want to use another method to temporarily secure the paper to the chair).

On reverse side, roughly trace the edge of the chair onto the paper. Where necessary fold the paper to create an edge of the pattern piece.

Once traced, remove pins and place paper on a flat surface (I used my wall and painters tape). Trace over your rough lines, straightening with the yardstick where necessary and connecting any gaps. Label your pattern piece and cut out.

Pin the cut out pattern piece to the chair to check the outline.

If there is a problem with the outline of the pattern piece, trim where needed or use scrap paper to fill in gaps.

This is the process used to create each pattern piece.

OUTSIDE BACK

Repeat the process with the OUTSIDE BACK. Pin the kraft paper rectangle to the back of the chair, mark the edges, and trim.

Fold the pattern piece in half to ensure the two halves are identical. (I hereby declare this act checking the “mirrorosity” of a pattern piece. Making up words is fun!)

Check the fit before moving on to the next pattern piece.

INSIDE BACK (aka the back cushion)
So far I’ve completed the OUTSIDE WING/ARM pattern piece and the OUTSIDE BACK pattern piece. These were relatively flat pieces and thus the easiest to draft. Now we’re left with the 3-dimensional pattern pieces to draft.

For the INSIDE BACK pattern piece (aka the back cushion), start from the vertical center line of the cushion and work outwards along the curve of the cushion, smoothing the paper with your hand and pinning as you go.

*Very* roughly trace the edge of the back cushion. I held my pencil parallel to the back cushion and traced down the inside corner that way. This left an extra 1″ or so to the pattern piece–but this isn’t necessarily a bad thing as we can use that excess for tucking later on (see Step 1: Sketching). I did not trim the bottom (again, excess for tucking).

For the upper curve, I approximated the center of the curve and cut a 2″ or so line into the paper.

Overlapping and taping these two new corners creates a dart that will allow the paper to follow the curve.

Create as many as these darts as you need to satisfactorily follow the upper curve.

To create the flat pattern piece, untape the darts and fold the pattern piece along the center vertical line.

INSIDE WING
Fold over an inch or two along the paper edge that rests in the corner of the back cushion and the side of the chair. This will allow some built in ease for tucking.

Place the folded edge firmly into crease then pin paper to wing.

In my original sketch, I had indicated that I wanted the Inside Wing pattern piece to extend down into the seat cushion crease. However, upon creating my paper pattern piece I discovered a stress point that was clearly hinted at by the original upholstery job via a seam in this location. Eventually I’ll edit this pattern piece to eliminate the extension, creating a seam where the wing meats the armrest.

Use the same darting technique from the back cushion pattern piece on the inside wing pattern piece. Trace the edge of the wing onto the paper, remove pins, un-tape darts, and trim. Repeat as necessary to get a satisfactorily fit.

ARMREST
The armrest on my chair is rather non-standard. Because of this, I have chosen to box it in with the slipcover rather than try to create a fitted cover for it.

Fold over an inch or two along the crease where the armrest meets the back cushion (this is different than the sketch, but will compensate for the stress point discovered in the INSIDE WING pattern piece).

Pin paper to armrest, following the front curve.

Cut opening for wing…

…And fold/pin paper over the top of the armrest.

Adjust corner of armrest to your liking. (NOTE: If you have a standard armrest with a curve along the top, you’ll probably have to add some darts in this area or another piece of cloth for the front part of the armrest…)

Adjusting the fit.

Adjusting the fit.

Trim and mark the adjustments to the corner.

SEAT
Fold over 2″ along the pattern piece where the inside back cushion meets the seat cushion.

Place pattern piece on seat cushion. Mark side cutouts.

Fold pattern piece in half along the center line of the width of the seat cushion and cut out the space for the armrests.

44 Responses to Sewing for the Home ~ Drafting a Slipcover

i have done tufted upholstery, draperies, etc and have always cowered at the thought of wing chairs … I will save this and tackle in a less-busy time… would love to have these done for my chair and loveseats in blue denim… wish me luck.

What is the reason for making a pattern on the muslin? Also, you show a somewhat square end on your armrest, whereas mine is curved. How do I make a pattern for that? I really want to try your suggestions, but I’m a bit intimidated!!!

Wow – I definitely should have tried doing it this way – with paper first! I just recovered (not slip covered, actually took off and recovered) a wing back chair. Nightmare of my life. It worked, finally, after a year of working on it and putting it away with fear and trepidation!

Thanks for the great tutorial…will help for next time (if there is a next time!) And thanks for the free fabric friday opportunity!

Thanks so much for this tutorial. I’ve attempted reupholstering several times only to quit the project half way through. This is going to be one of those tutorials that gets bookmarked and pulled up time and time again. Thanks!

My daughter wants me to redecorate her room for her 16th birthday. She was given a lovely old chair that once belonged to her Great Grandmother but it needs new upholstery. The chair is so intricate that I decided to do a slip cover. With your instructions I think I can handle it. Thanks!

I always found those decorating shows on HGTV frustrating because they’ll go buy a chair second hand and then just produce a perfect slipcover for it out of thin air without ever explaining how they did it.

Of course, now I know why.

The different stages helped quell that panicky feeling you get when you feel like you’re over your head. They’re also very mistake friendly: you just keep adapting as you go along, and by starting with scrap materials you don’t ruin your nice cloth.

This is fabulous! Thank you so much for taking the time and energy to put all this together. I want to slipcover my wing chair…it’s pretty similar to yours. I have watched Sarah Richardson on RoomService on Fine Living Network show how to slip cover furniture. She made it look so stinking easy, I thought for a slplit second …”hmnmm, maybe I can do this.” We’ll see.

Thank you SO much for taking the time to create this tutorial! My sweetie has a favorite chair that is known by one and all as “the ugly chair” and I’ve wanted to cover it for years. Just didn’t really know where to start.

Excellent outlines………appreciate the things to look for, too (stress points, etc.) I have struggled to cover a couple chairs in my long sewing life -not fun along the way but the end results cause one to burst forth in song! Thanks!

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